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The house was saved by a friend who took a second
mortgage on it, but though his studio remained to Copley, it was no longer the refuge from the world it had
been. As the painter sat before his canvas in an alien city and heard the greater rumble of the London traffic
outside his window, he sometimes realized that the mistake of his life had been to leave America,.to seek
perfection by imitating the old masters. He scowled at the paintings of his English years that hung unsold in
tiers around him, and turned to look instead at some of his American portraits which he had bought back in a
vain attempt to evoke the past. He told his wife that these canvases, which he had once scorned as crude, were
better than any of the highly polished works of his transatlantic career.
If only he could paint like that nowl But no; he
realized it was hopeless. "He sometimes says," his wife reported, "that he is too old to paint." Yet he had
to paint, for in his ambitious youth he had never allowed himself time to learn to play. Work alone could
distract his mind from his poverty and his frustrated career. What if the picture that jgrew beneath his
hand was vapid and inane? It calmed his nerves to move the hand. In 1815 his wife wrote:
"Your
father grows feeble in his limbs; he goes very little
out of the house, for walking fatigues him; but his health is good and he still pursues his profession with
pleasure, and he would be uncomfortable could he not use his brush."
The tragedy had acted itself out long before the curtain fell.
Still the doddering actor held the centre of the stage, repeating over and over in dull parody the motions
that had been the glory of his prime. He continued to paint and complain, to grow weaker and more senile,
but he suffered no serious illness until his seventy-eighth year, when he was struck down during dinner by a
stroke. Although it paralysed his left side, he rallied and was able to totter around a little; even a
second stroke did not kill him. His daughter wrote to her sister: "He may continue in his present state a
great while, but it is so distressing that without any prospect of recovery it is not to be
wished."
The old man sat stuck up in a chair like an inanimate
doll, but his eyes still turned in their sockets. When he felt strong enough to talk, he told his family
that he would not recover. "He was perfectly resigned and willing to die, and expressed his firm trust in
God, through the merits of the Redeemer." At last God took pity. Two hours after a third stroke that left
him "perfectly sensible though unable to speak so as to be understood," the long-wished-for release came. On
the ninth of September 1815, John Singleton Copley, whom many consider the greatest painter America has ever
produced, escaped at last from the long twilight of his exile.
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